Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Reaction Kinetics in Nanocrystalline IT-SOFC Cathodes

LAURA BAQUÉ; ANALÍA SOLDATI; HORACIO TROIANI; ANJA SCHREIBER; ALBERTO CANEIRO; ADRIANA SERQUIS

Simposio; 13th International Symposium on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC-XIII); 2013

Cathodic area specific resistance(ASR) can be decreased by reducing particle size to nanometerrange.This improvement is usually ascribed to the area/volume ratio increase and a higherconcentration of active sites for the oxygen reduction reaction. Nevertheless, this solely explanationseems not to be enough for explaining the high electrochemical performance of our nanostructured La0.4Sr0.6Co0.8Fe0.2O3-d (LSCF) cathodes. In this work,we study the relation between thecathode nanostructure (characterized even at atomic level) and its high electrochemical performance.Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization reveals that the cathode is composed ofnanocrystals surrounded by zones with some degree of crystalline disorder. This kind of nanostructurewould facilitate the ORR in this compound.